John W. James

Where were you when I needed you?

The saddest question we ever hear is, "Where were you when I needed you?"

That's what people ask when they find out what we do in helping grievers. We're presenting helpful and accurate information on this site, at the time you need it most, with the hope that you'll never need to ask that question.

It's an honor and a sad privilege to be addressing you, knowing that each of you has recently experienced the death of someone important to you. We also know some of you are reading this because of your care and concern for someone who is confronted by the death of someone important in their life.

We bring our personal experience in dealing with the deaths of people who were important to us, and our professional know-how in helping grievers for more than 30 years. We'll help you distinguish between the "raw grief" that is your normal and natural reaction to the death, and the equally normal "unresolved grief" that relates to the unfinished emotions that are part of the physical ending of all relationships.

A basic reality for most grieving people is difficulty concentrating or focusing. With that in mind, we asked Tributes.com to print our articles in a large type font to make them easier to read. Sharing our concern for grieving people, they agreed.

Ask The Grief Experts

When your heart is broken your head doesn't work right and your spirit can't soar. (Published 8/26/2014)

Q:

I lost my son 10 yrs. ago to Lymphoma. I have become very bitter and withdrawn. I can't find anything to occupy my time and nothing interests me. I can't seem to pull myself up out of this slump. He was our only child and I worshiped the ground he walked on—he was my world. When he died, I felt that our Pastor deserted us, so we had no spiritual counseling. I regret we didn't seek counseling elsewhere. Maybe if we did, I wouldn't be so bitter. Is it too late to seek counseling, or would it help since it's been 10 years?

A Grief Expert Replies:

Dear Anon,

Thanks for your note and question.

There are several elements to your note, two of which compound the original issue—your broken heart caused by the death of your son.

The two we want to address are the “spiritual counseling;” and whether or not time heals emotional wounds.

When someone important to us dies, our hearts are broken – the heart being the symbolic language we all use to represent our emotions. While the spiritual component may be affected, it is not the key to our grief. And the problem is that spiritual concepts do not repair our broken hearts. Without diminishing any good things that happened for you when you you were being “spiritually counseled” by your pastor, whatever did take place, didn’t help you feel emotionally complete in relationship to your son who died. It is also accurate to say that when someone important to you dies, your intellectual aspect doesn’t function well.

We state it this way, “When your heart is broken your head doesn’t work right; and when your heart is broken, your spirit [and/or religious components] cannot soar.”

The key to helping a broken heart is to learn the principles and actions that address the emotions that were left unfinished by the death.

Regarding time: Time can’t heal a broken heart anymore than time can fix a flat tire. In both cases, it requires correct actions. As you’ve observed, sadly, a full ten years hasn’t healed your heart, and another ten will probably only make it worse unless you learn and take actions that lead to recovery or completion.

Go to the library or bookstore and get a copy of The Grief Recovery Handbook. Read it and take the actions it outlines. As a result of taking those actions, you will begin to once more want to involve yourself in life. It will also help you deal with your strong painful feelings about what the Pastor did or didn't do.

The actions of completion will allow you to retain all the fond memories you have of your son. It will also allow you to remember him as you knew him in life, not only as you knew him in death; and it will allow you to redevelop a life of meaning and value even though it is dramatically different than it would have been had your son not died.